BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

SIU-E is just now finishing up transitioning from D-II. They'd likely be better off staying in the OVC.

 

The ultimate big-pay-day-for-a-thumping school. It's directional with a hyphen!

 

Double the appearance fee for them. They don't have football, though, so they miss out on that cash cow.

 

Don't mess with the Kangaroos.

 

Big Ten floating the idea of going to nine or 10 conference games. Can't see 10. It would guarantee teams having no more than seven home games in any season. At least with nine, schools can bank on eight home games every other season.

Matt Hays from The Sporting News has his own theory on the Big Ten's conference schedule and what it means.

Matt Hayes ‏@Matt_HayesSN
Delany says "9 or 10" league games in #B1G future. You better believe "10" means 16-team league.

Matt Hayes ‏@Matt_HayesSN
Best guess? #UVa and #GT to #B1G, #FSU, #Clemson to #Big12, #UNC, #Duke to #SEC RT @CourtMerrigan: @Matt_HayesSN Adding who else, you think?

 

10 games really screws with your non-conference scheduling. You'd only get two dates (three if one of them's @Hawaii), and some schools have at least one OOC rival they pretty must have to play (Illinois-Missouri, Michigan and Michigan State-Notre Dame). Throw in that FCS/guppy FBS pay-for-slay game and there's no flexibility.

What I've heard that makes more sense than it sounds like it would on the surface is blowing past 16 and hitting 18 or 20. Then treating the divisions as though they were conferences, with no cross-over until the postseason. Nine-team divisions gives you eight conference and four non-con, and 10-team divisions still allows for three non-cons.

Speaking of being constricted in non-conference scheduling, I haven't heard anything on this in a while, but I wonder if Navy will back out of the Big East football move. If they do move, and presuming an eight-game schedule, they'd have four open dates. Three of them are not only spoken for, they're pretty much immutable (Army, Air Force, Notre Dame). There's no flexibility, which was one of the reasons why Army left C-USA football a few years ago (their inability to be competitive was another, more compelling one)

 

Big Ten media types Monday were tweeting that an eight-game schedule was "off the table," that it would be nine or 10 games.

 

This is a big downside to the megaconferences. Something people are just now finding out, apparently.

If you have schools that don't play each other for several years, you really don't have a true conference as we have come to know it.

 

Unless the NCAA extends the regular season, a 10-game schedule makes really ties their hands in the non-conference part. Figure everyone has an FCS game, so that leaves them one date to do anything with.

 

The more conference games you have, the more teams that are destined to have losing records, too. No more padding the record with 2-3 non-conference cupcakes.

 

The Big 12 played a nine-game conference schedule in 2012 and Kansas was the only team that didn't finish the regular season with at least six wins.

 

Looks like North Dakota State won't have Minnesota to kick around anymore.

According to Barry Alvarez the Big 10 is going to stop scheduling FCS schools.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/190943281.html